Softball Shows It Belongs

When softball was dropped from the Olympic program in 2005 (by one vote!), I thought it was huge mistake.  I still feel that way 16 years later.  So, naturally I was excited when softball was included among the sports that the Japanese were adding for the Tokyo Games.  At last the sport was back on the Olympic stage, even if it was a one-off.

Unfortunately, softball won't be featured three years from now in Paris, but it's a good bet that it will be at LA 2028 and Brisbane 2032.  The challenge is keeping it in the Olympics beyond then...and that softball's place is permanent, not dependent on its popularity in the host country.  Because, as this tournament showed, softball belongs in the Olympics.

Was this tournament perfect?  No!  They were playing on a converted baseball field instead in a softball-specific venue (a concession to teaming up with baseball for a joint reentry bid) and the tournament only featured six teams instead of eight.  But did this tournament show that softball is worthy of being on the Olympic stage?  Absolutely!

There's nothing else that softball could've done on its end.  The tournament was competitive, exciting and, most importantly, high quality.  It's too bad there weren't any fans allowed.  Because just imagine how much that stadium would've been rocking during that thrilling USA-Japan gold medal game!

We'll see how the baseball tournament goes, as the sports' collective fates, for better or worse, are tied together.  That's the cruel irony of it all.  Softball was voted out primarily because of baseball, even though they were run by separate international federations at the time.  Now that they've combined their efforts into the WBSC, they're a package deal.  So, it's either softball AND baseball or neither one.  Which is a shame.  Because they're completely separate sports with completely different priorities.

Softball and the Olympics need each other a lot more than baseball and the Olympics do.  Baseball has the Major Leagues and the World Series.  It's completely impractical for the Major League to shut down in the middle of the season so that players can go to the Olympics.  The season structure in MLB is completely different than it is in the NHL or WNBA, so it's not realistic to make those comparisons. 

Likewise, the Japanese and Korean leagues DO shut down for the Olympics so their players can go.  But they also have fewer teams playing a shorter schedule, so it's much easier to make those adjustments.  (Japan and Korea are also significantly smaller countries size-wise, so the travel demands aren't anywhere close to what they are in the U.S Major Leagues.) 

Baseball also already has a marquee event where Major Leaguers represent their nations--the World Baseball Classic.  Is there room for both the WBC and an Olympic baseball tournament?  Of course!  But that doesn't mean Major League players need to participate in both.  After all, the Olympic soccer tournament and World Cup are able to peacefully coexist, and no one seems to have a problem with the best men's soccer players in the world not being at the Olympics.

For softball, however, the Olympics is the pinnacle.  No tournament will ever be bigger than this one!  If you want the best players in the world, you've got them!  And it means everything to them.  Which was plain to see for anyone who was watching.

Thirteen years ago, in the last Olympic gold medal game before this one, Japan upset the United States behind the masterful pitching of Yukiko Ueno.  Cat Osterman was in the circle for the U.S. that day.  Who were the starting pitchers in this time?  Yukiko Ueno and Cat Osterman.  They waited 13 years to have that moment again.  And when it finally came, it was definitely worth it.

What makes it so difficult, too, is the fact that softball waited 13 years to get back into the Olympics and now has to wait at least another seven more before the next tournament.  That's the toughest part.  It's impossible to gain any sort of momentum with all this starting and stopping.  There will be no bigger platform than the Olympics and the exposure that comes with it.  How do they expect the game to grow when, instead of disappearing between Olympiads, it only appears in the Olympics once in a 20-year period?  (While modern pentathlon and taekwondo don't have to worry about their Olympic status.)

One of their arguments when they dropped it was because softball doesn't have enough of a "global reach."  Well, you know how to increase its global reach?  By giving it a permanent place in the largest sporting event on the planet! 

It took until 1996 for softball to become an Olympic sport.  That only lasted 12 years before the sport was removed from the program, only to return 11 years later.  In between, an entire generation of softball players grew up playing the game waiting for a day that they hoped would come but feared never would.  Their dedication and perseverance was rewarded and softball made its Olympic return, only to have those Olympic dreams once again yanked away.

Hopefully we don't have to deal with this ever again and the Paris Games will be the last Olympics without a softball tournament.  Because if there was ever a sport that belongs, it's softball.  The world's best players proved that over the past week.